Ye old familiar SideBar Drop in IE6

[Cais]

I may be a bit late adding my comments here, but I find this often helps with IE6 issues:

In your CSS file, for every element that contains a "float" property, add this property statement to the element:

display: inline;

This property is actually the default setting for an element and generally will not have any effect if added.

For example your CSS for one of your elements would change to:

#navigation {
display: inline;
 float: left;
 width: 100%;
 padding-top: 10px;
}

This generally occurs when there is a margin on the same side as the float and has been described as the IE6 "Double Margin Bug", which can then affect other elements on the page.

Also a note, if you need to see your site in IE6 you can always use Microsofts VMC for windows users. I wrote a post on my blog that gives a basic outline how to do this. Here is a permalink: IE6 Is Still Out There.

PS: The header alignment is still to the left.

[Cais]

Kathy, compliments of my wife, try this in your CSS:

body {
 font-size: 100%;
 color: #131313;
 margin: 0px;
 padding: 0px;
 background-image: url(../song-theme/images/deck.png);
 background-position: top center;
 background-repeat: no-repeat;
}

It should fix the widescreen centering issues. It proves out in FF using Firebug.

[JLeuze]

It looks good on my end now Kathy, I think you got it right

[Kathy]

Thanks for all the help.
The site is a success, my users have added over 100 songs already.
I unveiled it on March 8th, International Women's Day.
Pretty good for just 9 days!

[jedi]

Hi all, thanks for your dedication to helping others. Maybe I should start a new thread, but my issue is very similar to Kathy's. I have no web design experience, but I started (www.eventingnation.com) a month ago. I am using a modified version of the Hamasaki WP theme. Some of my readers use IE6, which for my site does not show any sidebar and gives a massive margin at the bottom. I am just beginning to learn HTML and CSS and I understand the gist of some of the responses to Kathy's question, but I would be eternally grateful if someone could please suggest a specific solution for my site. Thanks again in advance.

Kind Regards, John

[Cais]

The theme author has released a newer version of the theme than what it shows you have installed. The update may have the fixes you need.

You should try downloading and updating your theme to see if that fixes the issues. Hopefully all will work out.

... and welcome to the Tavern!

[jedi]

Thank you for the reply JellyBeen. I am surmising that you saw the "Hamasaki 1.6" in my footer, checked the theme's homepage and saw that version 1.7 was available. However, I downloaded the theme well after the reported 1.7 release date (18/2/09), and the current version available for download contains "<span><a href="http://www.jauhari.net/themes/hamasaki/" title="Free WordPress Theme: Hamasaki">Hamasaki 1.6</a> design by Nurudin Jauhari</span>" in the footer.php file. My point is that I believe that I have the latest version; I even checked the style.css and functions.php files which look identical to the original download on my computer.

The reason I resist just installing the theme cold again is that I have made several significant modifications by essentially changing the code using trial and error. I do not believe that my modifications have caused the problem because multiple people complain of the same problem on the theme's comment section. My issue is exacerbated by the fact that I only can check IE6 at work (I have a Mac with Safari and Firefox, I tried your link about Microsoft VMC but the story did not appear). My plan of attack is to modify style.css by adding "display: inline" to the sidebar section as you mentioned in an earlier post.

#sidebar {

display: inline;

float: left;
margin-left: -300px;
width: 300px;
}

If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Kind regards, John

[Cais]

Sorry, I did not look deeper into your theme code to see the variances between your install and the author's current offering.

Thank you for pointing out that the wunderkind at MS have deprecated yet another link ... I did manage to find a more direct link to the Virtual PC download and I have updated my blog post. http://jellybeen.wordpress.com/2008/...ill-out-there/ The first link should take you directly to the download page. The second link I re-verified and will take you to the VHD files download page.

I believe (a Mac with) Safari can emulate most common browsers for several versions (I'm at work and my Mac is at home) although I am not sure how close to 100% accurate the emulations are.

<edit> Also in Safari 4 (Win/PC) there is a page icon to the right of the search box at the top of the screen. The drop down menu from that icon gives a choice of: Develop > User Agent > ... lots and lots of browser emulations. That may be enough rather than the MS VPC </edit>

I can appreciate the frustration that older versions of IE create ...

[jedi]

Adding "display: inline;" to the #sidebar in style.css did not help, I checked at work today. Would it make since for me to add "display:inline" to all the elements that contain "float" in my particular case? Thanks for the help!

Regards, John

[Cais]

I do not believe it will cause any additional grief, and I do seem to recall it is a good rule of thumb when using floats, if you are experiencing issues.